Homemade Spanish Rice

Our family is a huge fan of Spanish rice.  We used to use a random recipe that my husband found and it was good but this recipe that he makes now is amazing.  It always turns out great and is very easy to manipulate the basic recipe to your liking. 

We serve this with our Salsa Chicken, with our Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas and basically any other time I can convince my husband to make it.  This is even a hit with our teenager and our toddlers.  It has awesome flavor and doesn't have too much heat.  If you wanted to increase the heat you could just add more cayenne.  This rice is awesome as well the second day.  Because it is so tender the day that you originally make it, the rice doesn't dry out when you try to reheat it. 

Spanish Rice
Prep time: 30 mins
Cook time: 20 mins

Ingredients:
1 whole onion, chopped
1 Tbsp minced garlic
2 and 1/2 cups chicken stock
1 cup jarred tomato based salsa
pinch of cayenne
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cumin
salt to taste
frozen corn
diced carrot
1 and 1/2 cup rice
2 Tbsp olive oil

Instructions:
Add oil to pan, heat and sweat your chopped onion.  Once your onion has sweated, add rice and brown to your liking.  While rice is browning, add salt, cumin, paprika, cayenne, salsa, and chicken stock to a bowl and blend with an immersion blender.  (If you don't have an immersion blender, you can use a regular blender.  The idea is to get the salsa pureed a bit more.)  Add garlic to browned rice and continue to brown for approximately one minute.  Pour liquid mixture into browned rice.  Add corn and diced carrots and bring the entire pot to a boil and boil for one minute.  Once one minute has passed, turn the heat down to low, put a lid on the pot and do not open for 20 minutes.  After 20 minutes, open the lid, fluff the rice and serve.

Enjoy!